Hearthpwn

It's free to play.
If your standard for determining if a game is open to new players is how well can someone fight people in the top 1 percent of play from the get go, then every game is poorly designed. For most of ladder, a budget collection and a disciplined attitude can climb very high, and even break legend (which means hearthstone actually IS open to all levels of collection and play). 
Moreso, a pay to win game is one where payments are either necessary, or benefit drastically. In hearthstone, they don't really. All content is accessible through grinding, and many pro players are still very comfortably not 
Also, arena is the most efficient shit ever if you're even remotely competent, and just got a lot more fun and skill-reliant. Free to play players can get full, competitive decks with all goldens just by arenaing a lot, and that, combined with TGT's lack of necessary cards and budget options over all, combined with the increase in gold given in hearthstone (combined with the relative new fun contributed by brawl), means the game has gotten cheaper and more accessible.
The judgement of a good free to play model is: how much do you need to spend, and how do you feel about spending.
You can pay just a little for a few packs, a wing of an adventure, or an arena, and that all feels great. You can pay a good sum for a full adventure or a lot of packs, or you can just pay as you wish.
The game is still cheaper than almost any other card game in history, and all of it is done very well.

Please calm down.

Quote from Devor jump

I crafted Rhonin and so far it's been a little disappointing.  In particular, he gets silenced a lot, and getting him to die is slower than it sounds.  Maybe he'll still work out, but I'm not sure he's the sure thing people think he is.

If it's hard to get a 7-7 to die, things are going well.

Hate cards are very common in hearthstone, and very common in games as a whole. Their purpose is to provide counterplay to obscene ideas. Kezan Mystic is a very acceptable example of this, as its a very brutal counter to a very unnecessary thing. Unlike weapons, secrets don't get value after being played until they activate, and can be played costlessly. Putting that into account, an efficient, focused tech card was a very fine addition on blizzard's part. 

Freeze mage is not a good deck for the game. I love it, I love playing it (It's much more complex than people give it credit for, though its also often forgiving), and I find fighting it to be more captivating than most, but it's a horrible example of the game's cards having the potential of pushing it too far in an obscene direction. Adding tech cards to fight it, to fight hunters and tempo mages and secret paladins is wonderful for the game, and bullying of secrets doesn't hurt the class the way weapon bullying does, it just hurts the archetypes. Warrior, Rogue, and Paladin can descend in popularity when weapon removal increases, but hunter and mage don't descend when kezan is added. 

Since Hearthstone lacks obscenely efficient clears (I'm looking at you, Wrath of God), and minions don't heal at the end of turns, stats are vital. 4-3 in stats is barely worth it for 2 mana, for 4 its going to hurt your winrates across the board. 

Rule #1 of doing well in hearthstone and enjoying the game: 
Don't listen to Kripp.

Definitely me. I even got an extra 5000 gold just so I can open 100 packs when the expac hits.

Woop woop TGT!

Priest was a direct counter, but that was when Shaman had moved to low attack, relatively easy to ignore minions like Haunted Creeper and Harvest Golem. Now we're seeing totem golem and tuskarr totemic, so shaman might be able to prevail
Still! There is lots of hope for Priest on the TGT front

Turns out you don't have to actually provide proof for your claims anymore, you just have to end them with :/
:/

12 stats is an incredibly wrong way of looking at it. Cairne is not a 8-10, he's a 4-10. The health is always relevant, but the attack is on a to-body persistence. That's why dreadsteed is a 1-infinity and not an infinity-infinity. Shredder's a 4-3 that turns into a 3-2, on average, which is 3.5-5 in stats, which is WORSE than yeti. It's a sticky, reliable midrange card that can turn the game on its head in a heartbeat and rewards skillful handling. That's a very good card for the game. Combine that with the fact that mechanical and regular yeti still see use (reg yeti has seen tournament play in midrange druids who wanted more 4s even after the addition of shredder), many decks don't run him or prefer other 4s (Twilight Drake, Void Terror), and we have a balanced, good card. 

Quote from Twystyd jump

 I assume it will. I also assume it will give you a legendary a third of the time like it currently does for the other sets. Blizzards lazy programming team could fix the issue by using a % system like they do with legendary cards opening packs but are far to busy doodling card backs.

Blizzard isn't going to spend valuable coding time addressing confirmation bias. Unstable Portal is supposed to randomly get /any/ minion, with no regard for rarity or amount allowed in a deck. That increases the frequency by quite a bit, but not so large as to be unreasonable. 

Quote from Syncesta jump

Why is this getting downvoted? He's absolutely right.
No way in hell is standard midrange Shaman taking people to Rank 1 Legend. 

Rank 1 Legend is less a matter of deck and more a matter of skill. Coglorin is an incredibly good player, and he very regularly gets very high on the ranks in short amounts of time. He also plays a lot of Shaman, and the meta when he got there was Midrange Hunter, Druid, and Patron and Control Warrior, all decent to great match ups for the deck. 

Quote from arcademaster jump

Then they'll start running a silence. A single owl is enough, they'll draw through their whole deck anyway.

Besides, if a legendary that costs 1600 dust is the only viable counter, that's even worse as if there was none for average players.

Silence is a very awkward option for patron, as the entire deck is meant to synergize with itself.

The problem patron has is that it gets to ignore the board a lot of the times. Inspire, as a mechanic, solves that handily. Patron is going to have lots of trouble dealing with strong inspire mechanics, as well as the new and improved midrange shaman, among other things. 

Blizzard is solving the problem of decks that ignore the board by adding more and more minions that they shouldn't ignore, rather than the naxx solution to control of add minions that can't be killed.

Updates are always posted at the top of the article. You can quickly check the top of the most recent articles to see news. The current method allows for convenient display and content separation, which is relevant given how lively news is with Hearthstone, and its sources. 

Bolf isn't a minion in terms of trading. He is a spell taunt, and he is to be thought of as nothing else. He is a protection against a lot of different burst combos, and absurd high damage plays, who works wonders behind a taunt. He's not the best card, but if you're playing him to trade with minions, then in the words of Nefarian, you are doing it wrong. 

Quote from floodhorse jump

wtf? it doesnt really matter but i dont like the idea having this obvious powercreep.

You (and many others) are using the term powercreep very incorrectly. There are cards that are supposed to be bad, to teach or to provide community (Magma Rager). This card is STILL bad, bad enough to never run. So what does it matter that they printed it? Power creep is the effect of new content being stronger than what old content had to offer. There is PLENTY of better content than this, in the basic set. Not powercreep. 

Why would you be upset about control warrior? It's a slow, functional style this is relatively easily beaten down by smart, fast play. It's a strong style, certainly, but the only type of people that would be upset about it are those that play fast decks but don't know how to, and are blaming it on warrior.
Hearthstone, in general, is way too fast at the moment. Many decks (zoo, midrange hunter, tempo mage) win or lose depending on the board state on turns 2-4, and that's just far too fast for what the game is trying to be. Also, it takes a really deep misunderstanding of the game to think this card is overpowered in the slightest.